Books by D V Bishop

Ritual by Fire

Macmillan, June 2023

Florence. Summer, 1538. A night patrol finds a rich merchant hanged and set ablaze in the city’s main piazza. More than mere murder, this killing is intended to put the fear of God into Florence. Forty years earlier on this date, puritanical monk Girolamo Savonarola was executed the same way in the same place. Does this new killing mean Savonarola’s vengeful spirit has risen again? Or are his fanatical disciples plotting to revive the monk’s regime of holy terror? Cesare Aldo has his suspicions but is hunting thieves and fugitives in the Tuscan countryside, leaving Constable Carlo Strocchi to investigate the ritual killing. When another important merchant is slain even more publicly than the first, those rich enough to escape the summer heat are fleeing to their country estates. But the Tuscan hills can also be dangerous places.

Soon growing religious fervour combines with a scorching heatwave to drive the city ever closer to madness, while someone is stalking powerful men that forged lifelong alliances during the dark days of Savonarola and his brutal followers. Unless Aldo and Strocchi can work together to stop the killer, Florence could become a bonfire of the vanities once more . . .

The Darkest Sin

Macmillan, March 2022

Florence, Spring 1537 – When Cesare Aldo investigates a report of intruders at a convent in the Renaissance city’s northern quarter, he enters a community divided by bitter rivalries and harbouring dark secrets.

His case becomes far more complicated when a man’s body is found deep inside the convent, stabbed more than two dozen times. Unthinkable as it seems, all the evidence suggests one of the nuns must be the killer.

Meanwhile, Constable Carlo Strocchi finds human remains pulled from the Arno that belong to an officer of the law missing since winter. The dead man had many enemies, but who would dare kill an official of the city’s most feared criminal court?

As Aldo and Strocchi close in on the truth, identifying the killers will prove more treacherous than either of them could ever have imagined…

Praise for The Darkest Sin

‘Absolutely terrific’
– Philip Gwynne Jones, author of the bestselling Nathan Sutherland series.

‘D V Bishop transports you to an utterly convincing 16th century Florence, where the best and worst of human nature constantly circle each other in this tense mystery.’
–S G MacLean

City of Vengeance

Pan Macmillan, 2021

The first in a new series set against the backdrop of the Medici dynasty in 1530s Renaissance Florence. City of Vengeance follows the case of a prominent Jewish moneylender who is found murdered. Cesare Aldo, a former soldier and now an officer of the city’s most powerful criminal court, is given four days to solve the murder. In the course of his investigations, Aldo uncovers a plot to overthrow the ruler of Florence, Alessandro de’Medici. If the Duke falls, it will endanger the whole city. But a rival officer of the court is trying to uncover the secrets of Aldo’s private life to bring him down. Can Aldo stop the conspiracy before anyone else dies, or will his own secrets destroy him first?

Praise for City of Vengeance

A first-class historical thriller… Bishop’s spirited and richly detailed story is a tour-de-force. –David Baldacci

Richly atmospheric… transports you to another time and place. –Ambrose Parry, author of The Way of All Flesh